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Huge bill to clear Cork nuclear store

CORK university is attempting to export 2.5 tonnes of uranium rods, the remains of a nuclear reactor that has been stored in the basement of its physics department since 1986.

The college is facing a bill of several million euros for the transport of the 1,400 uranium slugs, along with a supply of plutonium.

The material, whose existence was unknown outside a small circle of experts, is being held in secure conditions behind a steel door which is guarded by closed circuit television.

Categorised as nuclear fuels, the material is the remains of a research nuclear reactor which was used for more than a decade on the campus of Cork University but is now dismantled. The reactor was given to Ireland by America under the Atoms for Peace Programme in 1974. The same programme supplied India and Pakistan with their first nuclear reactors.